What I’ve learned from being a mentor for young vision impaired people

Three years ago, I started my journey as a mentor for young vision impaired people. By no means did I think I qualified for such a role, but a part of me felt as though the openness I discovered through writing my blog served some purpose elsewhere too. And so, one day, as the yellowing leaves beckoned a new season, I embarked on a fresh chapter of my own, reaching into a pocket of self-belief and whipping out some words that comprised the bulk of my application. 

Having passed the first stage of the application process, a training weekend in Buxton, of all places, ensued and I was officially welcomed into the gang of incredible vision impaired people who form the mentoring team at LOOK UK, a charity supporting vision impaired people and their families. 

Now, it’s easy to feel as though I’m repeating myself here on my blog at times; I’ve shared so much of my story over the years that it’s only natural to convince myself that I’m repackaging snippets of the chapters and delivering them under a new title every time. But as I was chasing inspiration for new content, I realised that I’ve never truly addressed my experience of being a mentor with you before, hence why we’re here today. 

What is mentoring?

For context, LOOK’s Peer Mentoring Scheme offers mentoring support for vision impaired people between the ages of 11 and 29. As mentors, we draw on our own experiences to help guide others who are following in our footsteps. 

The fabulous LOOK team match mentors with mentees based on their interests and life experience, so it’s essentially Tinder for mentoring, with a much higher success rate.

Once a match is confirmed, we chat through a mentoring specific website/app and some utilise Zoom, which is something I did with my last mentee. Messages are monitored by the LOOK team and someone will always be present during Zoom calls, too. 

Mentoring partnerships typically last around a year; my most recent spanned a year and a half and very recently came to an end. Reflecting on the partnership during a final Zoom call got the old cogs turning about what I’d learned during the partnership and so I thought it was only fair to share some of those with you. 

What have I learned in my time as a mentor?

How to be open

It’s a well-established fact that I’m an open book when it comes to my vision impairment, you only have to scroll through my blog’s archives to see proof of that. But mentoring demands a different kind of openness to what I’m used to sharing here. 

Direct conversations about specific topics revive dormant memories and I find myself examining how best to incorporate them into conversations in a relatable way, 

Most often than not, the mentee will be living a chapter in their life which has long ended for me. School, for example, has been an overarching theme in the mentoring partnerships I’ve had; a time in my life which I’ve blocked out for the most part.

I’ve had to identify how to be open about these moments in my own life which I may have stored away, and consider how to dust them off and offer to someone else in a way that’s going to prove helpful. 

 I should say that mentoring isn’t about delving into the nitty-gritty of the mentor’s life experience, we exist to guide our mentees, not to freely offer up our entire life story in the hope they find something they relate to amongst the pages. For me, mentoring is all about offering advice when it’s asked for and serving up some reassurance that the mentee isn’t alone in whatever it is they’re going through.

It’s those two things that invite me to share my own experiences in conversations because I know how valuable I would have found hearing that someone else has been there too. It’s through spotlighting certain moments in my life that I’m learning how to be open, and how open I should be when offering that information.

As mentors, we’re told from the get-go to respect boundaries, both our mentee’s and our own, so there’s never a situation where you have to share something you’re not comfortable with.

Different styles of communication

One of the main things I’ve learned as a mentor is how to adapt the way I communicate according to how my mentee does. 

I’ve learned to resist my writer tendencies and avoid sending a huge paragraph if the responses I’m getting are short. Granted, if they’re asking for revision advice, for example, I’m naturally going to be sending quite a long list but, for the most part, I’ve recognised the importance of matching their communication style in order to make them feel more comfortable when interacting with me. 

How to deal with difficult topics

Life presents many challenges for vision impaired people and so it’s only natural that some topics will hold some semblance of difficulty. 

Advice has been available from the offset about how to deal with difficult situations should they arise and a LOOK team member is never far away. It’s acknowledged that some topics might be as difficult for the mentors to address as they are for the mentees.

When a tricky topic does rear its head, I’ve formed a mental list on how to deal with them myself and how to consequently offer the most appropriate advice and guidance to my mentee in that situation. 

It’s not always easy to deal with slightly more challenging subject matters but I’m always glad that someone feels comfortable enough to invest their trust in me to seek my support. My last mentee and I could identify with each other in a lot of different ways and so when we were talking about something a little more challenging, I was glad to be able to dig into my past experiences and offer some solutions that helped me in the face of difficulty.

Being able to do that imbued the topic with a sense of relatability which was consequently reassuring for both of us.

It works both ways

When you think ‘mentoring’, you assume all of the tips and advice comes at the hands of the mentor but, in my experience, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Whether it’s a light-hearted eye-opener about how to look after guinea pigs, an alert to a new accessible cooking technique or a deeper dive into how another vision impaired person possesses the mettle to stand their ground in the face of adversity, I’m so grateful for the opportunity to learn from my mentees as much as they can hopefully learn from me.

There’s a great community

I think one of the best things that comes with being a LOOK mentor is the sense of community. I started this journey with a group of great people back on that training weekend in Buxton, but that small group is part of a much bigger family of mentors from all over the UK.

Fellow mentors are always on hand to offer support, and things such as group mentor supervisions have proven incredibly helpful for me when I’ve found myself faltering. 

The team host virtual quizzes to get mentors together and the quarterly catch-ups offer an opportunity to find out what everyone is up to. 

They say you can’t choose your family but LOOK’s is open to anyone and I’m glad that I made the choice to join.

There’s so much more I’ve learned from mentoring but we’d be here all day if I were to list them all. So I’ll end with this; Mentoring is ultimately a hand reaching out and offering the affirmation that someone else has been there too, and I think there’s something incredibly powerful in that. 

I’ve made no secret of the fact that life as a disabled person does come with its challenges, but mentoring is a reminder that my experiences, good or bad, can be used in a positive way. 

When my last mentee and I were reflecting on our 18 month partnership over Zoom, they said that going through the mentoring process had been empowering, telling me that they now believed ‘if Elin can do it, I can too.’ That’s the most rewarding feedback I could have asked for; an addition to the web of intersecting motivations that keep me on this mentoring journey.

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I’d love to know if you’ve ever had any experience of mentoring; whether it be as a mentor or mentee. How did you find it? Such an initiative didn’t exist when I was navigating my teenage years which is partly why I want to be a voice that someone can hopefully relate to now. There are so many incredible people who are a part of this project, guiding the next generation into a world where they hopefully feel heard, listened to and empowered.

If you’re aged 18-35 and fancy becoming a mentor yourself, you’re in luck! LOOK is currently searching for new people to join the team. Find out more over on their website and apply by Monday 5 December 2022. Join the family, your voice and experiences will go such a long way in supporting someone in a similar situation.

Elin x